The increasingly popular virtual world Second Life was overwhelmed by a flood of 鈥渟elf-replicating鈥� objects, dubbed 鈥済rey goo鈥�, on Sunday.
The trouble began with the appearance of a virtual gold rings in several areas of the virtual world. As users touched these rings, they starting replicating wildly and, eventually, the servers on which the game is hosted began creaking under the strain of the additional activity.
From 2245 GMT on Sunday, for about half-an-hour, tens of thousands of Second Life users were locked out of the world while staff removed the objects. The objects were dubbed 鈥済rey goo鈥�, after the concept of out-of-control self-replicating nanotechnology (See How safe is nanotech).
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鈥淎n attack of self-replicators is causing heavy load on the database, which is in turn slowing down in-world activity,鈥� an administrator wrote on the official Second Life blog on Sunday evening (GMT). 鈥淲e have isolated the grey goo and are currently cleaning up the grid. We鈥檒l keep you updated as status changes.鈥�
Simple hack
Experienced Second Life residents dismissed the incident as unremarkable, although inconvenient. 鈥淕rey goo is not a clever hack or anything ingenious,鈥� says Aimee Weber, who develops virtual objects within Second Life for companies and research institutes. 鈥淵ou could write one in 5 minutes.鈥�
Weber notes that self-replicating objects have been released before and says the ability to create such objects is, in fact, a crucial aspect of the world. 鈥淟inden Lab considered making self replication impossible 鈥� it鈥檚 certainly within their power to do so,鈥� she told New 杏吧原创. 鈥淏ut there were enough legitimate and cool uses for self replication that they decided to keep it.鈥�
The incident follows a more controversial episode within Second Life 鈥� the release of a program called CopyBot, which can be used to copy any in-world object. CopyBot bypasses the game鈥檚 in-built copy controls, analysing network communications in order to gather the information needed to replicate an object. As some users make money by selling virtual objects within Second Life, Weber says this program could transform the economy of Second Life from being based on objects to focussing on services.
In the long run, there may be no way to guard against programs such as CopyBot, she adds. 鈥淭he problem is, if you can see the object, you have to have the information in some form,鈥� she says. 鈥淎 clever reverse engineer will likely always be able to grab that information.鈥�
